Collapse
by DarkandtwistyGirl
Summary: Set in mid season 3. Cameron collapses while the team are working on a case. What happens when the patient is one of their own, can they save her life? *Complete*
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own House, or the characters. **

**This is hardly my first fanfic, but it is my first attempt at House fanfic, so I hope it isn't too terrible. Please let me know what you think!**

**Enjoy****!**

* * *

House and the team have been working on a difficult case for close to a week, and they still haven't found a diagnosis.

Cameron is watching as House busily writes several new symptoms onto the white board, but she doesn't speak up at all as they go over the differential, she has a pounding headache and is struggling to keep her breakfast down.

"Cameron, what do you think?" House turns around to face her, and is shocked at how terrible she looks. He knows she was in a fender bender accident yesterday, but as usual doctors make the worst patients, and she refused to be checked out, otherwise the gash in her hairline would have been stitched instead of glued, and the sprained wrist would have at very least been examined properly.

Cameron struggles to stay focused, swaying dangerously in her seat as she says. "Wha? I don't feel so-"

Before anyone can say anything, or even stop her fall, Cameron falls to the ground, unconscious, and starting to seize.

Chase and Foreman jump out of their seats, and rush to her side.

With Foreman's help, Chase rolls Cameron onto her side, and supports her head as she continues to shake violently.

Foreman shouts to House. "We need some Ativan."

House hobbles out of the room as quickly as he can, and comes back a moment later with a full syringe, which he pushes into Cameron's arm.

The seizure subsides within seconds of the medication being given, but-

"She's stopped breathing!" Chase says worriedly as they roll her onto her back, and he begins giving her mouth to mouth.

Foreman runs out into the hallway, and returns a moment later with a crash cart, and a nurse bringing a gurney behind him.

While Foreman has been out of the room, House has assessed Cameron, and quickly reports to him. "She's got a weak and thready pulse, and her left pupil is blown, GCS is three. Probably been bleeding into her head since the accident." He then sarcastically adds. "But apart from that she's fine."

"Damn." Foreman mutters as he takes position above her head, and orders the nurse. "Start a line, push Sux and Etomidate. Then hand me a laryngoscope and a seven and a half sized ET tube, and get ready to bag her."

Within a minute, Foreman moves away from her slightly, and declares. "Okay, tube's in, start bagging. Let's get her on the gurney. She's got a probable intracranial haemorrhage, we need to get her straight to the OR."

* * *

Five minutes later, Chase, Foreman, and House are watching over Cameron as she has a CT scan, when Cuddy walks in. "Why wasn't I informed that Dr Cameron had collapsed?" She asks, as though she is surprised that House didn't take the time to call her when one of his fellows started bleeding into her head.

"I'm sorry, I must've missed the memo that said I had to tell you every little thing that happened in my day." House shoots back mockingly.

Cuddy looks over at Foreman, who quickly answers. "There wasn't time. One minute we were working on the case, the next Cameron was on the floor suffering a grand mal seizure."

"What do you think is wrong?" Cuddy asks with concern in her voice.

"Probable-" Just as Foreman starts to speak he sees the CT scan, and then rephrases. "Massive epidural haemorrhage, probably caused by head trauma sustained yesterday in an MVC." After taking another moment, Foreman tells the assembled group. "There's a large tear in the middle meningeal artery. Get her out of there, we need to relieve the pressure before she suffers permanent damage."

House shuts down the scanner, and they all hurry into the scan room.

* * *

Once they've gotten Cameron out of the scanner, Foreman lays out a surgical kit that he'd had the foresight to send for. "She'll never even make it as far as the OR if we don't relieve the pressure."

"You're going to do burr holes?" House says, surprised by his underling's willingness to do what needs to be done.

Foreman looks up at his colleagues grimly as he says. "No choice." Before he makes a small incision just behind Cameron's ear, and then picks up the drill.

They all stay in apprehensive silence as Foreman drills through Cameron's skull. Once he stops the drill, Foreman takes the suction tool from Cuddy, and quickly drains away a large volume of pooled blood, before saying. "Okay. She's stabilized, let's get her up to the OR."

* * *

Just as Chase and the anaesthetist, Dr Bradley, transfer Cameron over onto the operating table, she begins to come around. Chase moves into her line of sight, and gently says. "Just relax, Cameron. You had a seizure, we had to intubate you, the scan showed a bleed in your brain. Foreman's scrubbing in now, he's got to do a craniotomy to repair the damage, and drain the blood. Okay?"

Cameron nods weakly before Dr Bradley starts repositioning her to prep.

Chase squeezes her hand reassuringly as he watches Dr Bradley administer the anaesthetic, and he comfortingly says. "I'll be right with you the whole time. You're going to be fine."

As the last word leave his mouth, he watches Cameron's eyes slip closed.

"Okay, she's out." Dr Bradley says out loud as he continues to prep Cameron for surgery.

Chase stays sitting at Cameron's side silently until he sees the scrub nurse bring over electric hair clippers. He knows that it needs to be done, but still. "Do you have to do that?"

The nurse smiles sympathetically at him. "Yes, Dr Chase. I'm sorry."

Just as the nurse turns the clippers on, Chase holds out his hand, and says. "Let me, please."

She is surprised, but hands them over silently before she moves on to set things up.

Chase hesitates slightly before he turns the clippers on, and gently puts them against Cameron's head, and begins to cut away her long dark locks.

As he does so a number of bruises and small cuts become visible; she must have been knocked around a lot more in the accident than she had said.

* * *

Several minutes later, Chase has finished shaving away Cameron's hair, and Dr Bradley and the scrub nurse have positioned her in the halo frame, and draped her for the surgery, when Foreman comes back into the room. He baulks at the sight of his co-worker on the operating table, but after a moment, he says to Dr Bradley. "Are we ready to start?"

"Yeah. Everything's set, and she's still relatively stable."

Foreman steps up to the table, but before he makes the incision, he asks Chase. "Are you sure you want to be here, Chase?"

Chase merely nods, not taking his eyes away from Cameron.

Without further delay, knowing that Cameron is losing blood at a rapid rate and has already needed a number of transfusions, Foreman picks up a scalpel, and makes an incision from her forehead to just below her left ear.

"Operation started at ten twenty three am." Foreman says to one of the nurses, who make a note of it as Foreman continues, picking up a neurosurgical drill, and making a series of burr holes in Cameron's skull, he then swaps the drill for a surgical saw, and cuts between the burr holes, and removes the skull flap, before proceeding to commence repairing the damage.

* * *

Half an hour later, Foreman is over half way through the repair, when the monitors begin to screech, and Dr Bradley calls out. "She's crashing."

* * *

****

**Thanks for reading!**

Should I continue this fic?


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own House, or the characters. **

**Thanks for the great reviews! Hope you enjoy the second part of this two-shot.**

* * *

Chase starts chest compressions, while Dr Bradley and Foreman start shouting out orders to the nurses for numerous medications in a frantic effort to restart Cameron's heart.

A moment later, Dr Bradley is at Chase's side, holding the defibrillator paddles. "Step back Chase. We've got to shock her." Chase obliges, albeit reluctantly. Dr Bradley then orders the scrub nurse. "Charge paddles to two hundred." And then once the paddles are charged, he calls out. "Charged ...Clear." Before triggering the paddles, and delivering the electrical charge to Cameron's lifeless body. One look up at the monitor causes Dr Bradley to say. "No change. Charge again, three hundred."

Again, the scrub nurse follows his orders, and gets the defibrillator ready.

Again, the call of "Charged... Clear." Rings out through the operating room before Cameron's body is once again arched off the table by the shock coursing through her.

Once again there is no change, and Dr Bradley looks up at Foreman sadly, and suggests. "Maybe you should let her go. She's been through enough."

Before Foreman can answer him, Chase steps back up to the table, and angrily says. "No way! No. She's young, keep trying."

Dr Bradley and Foreman exchange a glance, and the decision is made to try one last time. They prepare to shock her again, at three-sixty this time.

Everyone in the room holds their breath in hope as Dr Bradley once again presses the paddles to her chest, and calls out. "Clear." Before he shocks her again.

Everyone in the room holds their breath, and watches the monitor for several terrifying seconds before it shows a heart rate. "She's back in sinus rhythm." Dr Bradley tells no one in particular, and then turns to Foreman, and tells him. "You need to finish up, if she goes back into arrest, we won't be able to get her back."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Cameron is out of surgery, and Chase is sitting by her side in the ICU. She is still intubated, and she hasn't woken up yet, and even though that is to be expected, Chase is trying to hold back panic, unsuccessfully.

"Please Allie, please be alright." Chase says wearily as he strokes her cheek gently, trying to coax her back into awareness.

_I should've made her get checked out. _

_She had a head injury, and I did nothing!_

_This is my fault._

_Please let her pull through this._

* * *

It is another three hours before Chase looks up at Cameron, and to his joy, he sees that Cameron's eyes are open, and she is looking towards him. Chase practically jumps out of his seat, and says warmly to her. "Welcome back, Allie …You had us all worried there for a while."

Cameron weakly tries to pull out the breathing tube, but Chase quickly pulls her hands away, and tells her. "You're intubated. Just calm down, and I'll take it out for you."

Cameron settles instantly, and Chase quickly gathers the necessary equipment to remove the tube. Once he's deflated the cuff of the tube, Chase wraps his hand around it, and instructs Cameron. "Okay, breathe in, and on three blow out."

Cameron takes a breath around the tube, and then after Chase has counted it, she blows out as he pulls out the tube. As soon as it's out, she leans forwards, coughing violently.

Worried that she'll hurt herself, Chase tries to soothe her as he grabs a glass of water, and carefully gives her a mouthful, which quickly eases her coughing fit. He then tells her. "I've got to go page Foreman. I'll be right back." Before he walks out into the hallway.

* * *

Chase re-enters the room several minutes later, with Foreman following close behind him. Chase takes his seat at her bedside, while Foreman greets her, getting straight down to business. "Good to see you awake, Cameron. How're you feeling? Any pain?"

Cameron looks up at her colleague, turned surgeon as she answers. "Dull headache." And then realising she doesn't know, she asks. "What happened to me?"

"You were involved in a car accident yesterday, we think that must have caused a small tear in your middle meningeal artery, which inevitably ruptured, and caused a severe epidural haemorrhage. You were lucky, if you'd collapsed at home you probably would've died, as it is we got you into surgery, and repaired the damage." Foreman informs her quickly before he says. "I just need to do an exam, okay?"

"…" Cameron pauses for a moment, trying to process that she has just had surgery, brain surgery, because she thought she knew better. "Um, okay." She eventually answers.

Five minutes later, Foreman has checked all her vitals, and examined the surgical incision, doing well. And now he is checking her strength. "Okay, squeeze my hands for me, right and left." He tells her as he puts his hands in hers.

Cameron squeezes his left hand tightly, but barely moves her right hand, let alone squeezes his. She looks up at him with panic clear in her eyes.

Foreman keeps up a professional façade, despite his worry as he moves towards the end of the bed and repeats the test on her feet, with the same result, severe weakness on her right hand side; complication of surgery or caused by the bleed, either way, same result.

Cameron is released from the hospital, in a wheelchair less than a week later, but she still has to go to PPTH every day for physical therapy in an attempt to regain some of the function that she's lost.

* * *

She has been out of hospital for two weeks when her therapist decides that she is ready to start using a frame to get around. The one he has gotten for her has an accessory, a tubular holder at just the right height that she puts her right arm in and rest it there, therefore giving her much better control with it than a standard frame.

As they go around the room, Cameron asks her therapist, Paul. "So do you think I can get back to work soon?"

Paul stops her, and gently tells her. "Not yet, Alison. You're only three weeks post op, and you have a long way to go. I'm sorry."

"I hate this!" Cameron cries despairingly, even though she knows that he's right. It isn't fair, all she's ever done is help people, and yet here she is.

* * *

That night, when Chase finishes work he goes around to Cameron's house, picking up a bouquet of roses, a bottle of wine, and some takeaway on his way, intent on surprising and cheering up Cameron, she seemed down when he saw her earlier.

As he turns his key in the door of her apartment, and lets himself in, Chase is shocked at the sight before his eyes. Cameron is sitting on the couch, and there are at least four dozen pills laid out on the coffee table, alongside a bottle of vodka.

"Allie?" Chase says questioningly, shocked.

She barely looks up at him as she says. "Go away, Chase."

Chase ignores her request, drops his parcels by the door, before he goes over to the couch, and sits down beside her, drawing her close.

Cameron weakly tries to pull away, but really doesn't put up much of a fight as she says. "Please, Chase. Just go. Just let me do this."

"No, Allie. No chance." Chase says firmly, stroking her short hair gently in a soothing way. "Why're you even doing this? You're getting better."

"No I'm not." Cameron tells him despondently. "I can barely even walk!"

"And you couldn't even do that after surgery, you're getter better." Chase reasons.

They sit there in silence for almost half an hour before Cameron says. "I'm just so sick of being like this. Being this weak."

Chase sighs softly, and replies. "I know, Allie. But you are going to get better, you just need to give it time."

Cameron leans in closer to Chase, and begins to cry into his shoulder.

* * *

**Epilogue**

It is three months before Cameron returns to work. And when she does it is hardly a spectacle, she just walks into the outer office, now using a cane similar to House's, and sporting a short cropped hairstyle even though her hair has had time to grow much longer, when asked, she simply states "It looks better like this." And give them a look that dares them to question her, and in truth it does look good.

Since that pivotal night, her entire outlook on her recovery has changed completely, and even though she still has months of physical therapy ahead, she goes to each session ready for whatever her therapist has for her, and determined to do whatever it takes; she really hates when House mocks her by walking a step behind her, and mimicking her less than perfected technique with the cane, and can't wait to be rid of it.

* * *

**Thanks for reading!**

A bit rushed, I know, but hopefully you've enjoyed it anyway. Please let me know what you thought!


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